ePly Blog

Hosting an event is always an exciting time! It’s a great opportunity to provide a valuable experience to your attendees while also showing off your brand. The question is, how do you promote your organization’s brand effectively? 

This is where the importance of branding really comes into play. So, what is branding exactly? Branding is using different elements of your organization (i.e. colors, values, slogans, etc) to create and promote one cohesive brand that represents your company. When people see one of these elements, they should instantly think of your organization.

When it comes down to it, event planning is a details game. That’s because there are SO many to keep track of. Between your multiple audiences (vendors, volunteers, attendees, sponsors, staff) and their various needs and wants...it’s enough to make even the most veteran event planner’s head spin!

But whether you ARE a veteran or a total amateur, juggling all of that makes it easy to forget something. So, what details in particular tend to trip event planners up the most? Here are seven to keep in mind:

Planning an event is exciting and thinking about all your attendees is just as thrilling! But first you have to get them there. You generally want people from all ages to attend and one of the most elusive audiences can be young professionals (ages 23-29). This audience is growing in importance because they are your next industry leaders!

But the question is… how do you get young professionals to WANT to attend your event? 

If you’ve never built sponsorship packages before, it can seem a little overwhelming at first...

“What should I include?”

“How MUCH should I include?”

“How do I make my more expensive packages worth the investment??”

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret...it’s all up to you! And if that makes it even more overwhelming, don’t panic. The trick is to create a few basic packages that you can use as guidelines, and then tweak them depending on the sponsor. Here’s how to go about that -

As the event planner, it can be easy to forget that conferences can feel extremely busy for attendees, too. A few days of bouncing in between sessions, grabbing quick lunches, networking, etc. is a lot of work!

That’s why you want to be strategic about how you gather feedback. Surveying attendees just after sessions means the content will be fresh in their mind, but the surveys should be short with questions that are easy to answer and get straight to the point. Here are our tips for post-session surveys:

The thought has probably crossed your mind a few times...“Does my event really need its own website, separate from my organization’s??”

The short answer is yes, absolutely! We get it, though: With everything else you’re managing, adding a website to that list can feel overwhelming. But the benefits are so worth it.

“Benefits, you say?” Of course! There are a lot of reasons why your event NEEDS its own website, but here are four of the biggest:

To entice event attendees to support your organization’s good work, your team needs to plan and execute an amazing event that will keep them talking about your organization. Now, if your organization's team is like most others, you may not have an event planning guru ready to take charge and blow this event out of the water.

So, you do what anyone would do: you turn to the internet. However, it’s important to remember that the first event planning software you find isn’t necessarily the best choice. New tools are very important investments, so you owe it to your organization to put extra thought into picking one.

A healthy sponsorship program relies on keeping your sponsors satisfied with the value they’re receiving in return for spending their time and money on your event. Sounds simple enough, right? Theoretically, you should just be able to focus on fulfilling the details in their agreement - but in practice, it doesn’t always happen that way.

Unfortunately, despite your best efforts, some sponsors walk away from events dissatisfied. Whether it was a hard-to-please on-site rep, a venue problem that was out of your control, or you simply made a mistake (we’re all human!) your next task is to do what you can to turn that relationship around. Here are some steps to take:

If your event relies on the help of volunteers, then you know how difficult recruiting them can be. A person’s time is valuable - and asking them to spend a chunk of it with you doing work, for no pay? Well, that’s tough.

The good news is, most people are happy to volunteer their time for a cause or organization that matters to them. But getting them to return for your next event (so you can spend less time recruiting) depends on their experience the first time around: how well they’re treated by staff and if they felt it was a good use of their time.

With care and attention to the specific volunteer experience, retention should be a breeze! Start by following these rules:

Concert, fundraiser, conference, or 5k - no matter what type of event, your main goal is to get people to show up. That’s a LOT of pressure! Even if it’s an event you’ve been hosting for years, there’s a lot about event planning that makes attendance unpredictable.

To ease your mind, I recommend creating an event promotion plan - but treat it more like a guideline. You’ll want to be flexible and make changes as needed, but having a blueprint will keep the momentum going and make the whole promotional process feel a lot less hectic.

That all said, here are the four steps to take toward building your event promotion plan: